


Lessons Learnt Along The Way

by jamjar



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-26
Updated: 2005-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-11 18:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamjar/pseuds/jamjar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things learnt while Naruto is off training with Jiraiya for three years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons Learnt Along The Way

  
This is what Jiraiya learns in Hachida: That although Naruto is too young to be a client at the places they visit, he is old enough to be mistaken as a worker.

This is not a brothel. Something as crude as money is rarely spoken of here. The guests may make gifts -generous gifts, embroidered silk covering heavy bars of gold- but that is all. Within the doors, the girls are beautiful, graceful and as talented as any geisha anywhere. There are smaller rooms where one may discuss art with Beauty, and perhaps find other pleasures, but these are also not spoken of. Things are understood, not said.

In the main room, a woman dances on stage, turning into a bride, a wife, a crane, and men sit around low tables in yukata and play shogi or talk while drinks are poured for them by women more elegant than any princess. Jiraiya discusses art like porn and porn like art and doesn't notice the man Naruto's talking too until they get up to leave.

"He's going to teach me how to play shogi," Naruto says. "Hah! I'm gonna beat Shikamaru so badly when we get back."

"I doubt it," Jiraiya says, ignoring Naruto's spluttering rage. "No point you wasting your time on this one," he tells the man.

"I'm sorry," the man says. "I didn't realise his time was spoken for."

Jiraiya smiles. "His time is free, when he doesn't have training. I spoil the brat, taking him to places like this when he should be out there, working on his strength, his--"

"Spoil me! Pervert, I have to track you down or you'd never teach me anything," Naruto says. He turns bright blue eyes and an open expressive face to the man. "See, Kurosaki-san!"

Kurosaki-san does see, and Jiraiya is relieved to see a certain degree of amusement, mixed in with the frustration. "Yes, I do." He looks at Jiraiya. "I would still like to have him join me."

Jiraiya shrugs again. "If he wants, but he's a very backward boy. Slow. Wouldn't have a clue what you were trying to teach him."

Kurosaki-san looks at Naruto again, those eyes that look too old to be so open. "I understand." He bows a little, formally. "Perhaps you should spend more time with your sensei," he says. "I'm sure he has much to teach you."

Naruto pouts and looks hurt and Jiraiya makes a note to leave his notes lying about where the boy can read them.

Naurto does not learn this lesson until Aomachi, two towns away.

  
Behind the inn in Kuromatsu, Naruto sees one of the waitresses that served them dinner. She's pressed against a wall while a man- one of the customers, Naruto thinks, though he doesn't recognise him from the grunting back- pounds in to her. He stops, shocked. He's not completely ignorant -he's been forced to listen while Jiraiya reads his work over, and several of the places they've stayed have had informative pictures on the walls- but this is the first time he's actually seen it.

The girl sees him, too, and in between moans, she winks then rolls her eyes dramatically. "Oh yes, oh yes. You're so big, I can't--" the man jerks, making her jump against the wall and she bites her lip, then grins at Naruto. "Oh, stop. No. No." And she sounds so fake, so obviously fake that Naruto can't believe the man doesn't notice. "You're so big, you can't be a mere man, you're a wolf, a tiger, a bear, a--" She scrambles a little, one hand against the wall for balance and Naruto puts his hands against his head like ears. "--a rabbit, a-- a rabbit? Yes, like a hare in spring, you're so virile, you, you rabbit--" She tilts her face forward over the man's shoulder and shoots Naruto that familiar glance, I'm-so-angry-with-you-for-making-me-laugh, and groans some more before the man jerks and stops. She pushes him away, pulls down her skirts and heads out the alley, back to the bar. On the way, she aims a loose slap at Naruto's head. "A rabbit," she hisses, scowling like Iruka, before grinning. "I think he liked that."

In Jozenji, Naruto hears the facts of life from four women with varying degrees of cynicism. They tell him much more than the medical nins at school said, more in detail and laughing the whole time. He's not sure if they're laughing at him or not.

It doesn't sound that much like what the old pervert writes about, but he doesn't tell them that.

  
By the time they get to Matsumachi, Naruto wants food and sleep and a hot bath, not necessarily in that order. He's not sure he could stay awake long enough to eat, let alone get clean. He's limping and his whole body aches like it's been used as a punching bag, which is not that far from the truth. He's too tired even to speak much, just glare at the old pervert.

The old woman that runs the onsen frowns when she sells them the towels, shoots Jiraiya a nasty glance that makes Naruto like her. She puts them in separate rooms and Naruto's has one that's actually got a bath right inside the main room. Naruto strips off and jumps in, and it's just this side of too hot. It's *perfect*. The old woman brings in towels and a yukata while he's still there and her mouth turns down when she sees the bruises on Naruto before looking away so he can get out.

Naruto grabs a towel and the food and starts eating. She's looking at his arm, the big purple set of marks from Jiraiya's geta on his shoulder.

"S'okay," he says, then swallows his food. "It's okay," he says more clearly. "I heal real fast." Her expression doesn't change, so he tries again. "I've been hurt much worse than this before."

That seems to make her angry, which worries him a little -he doesn't want to get kicked out of his room with it's own, personal bath- but she doesn't seem to be angry at him. "That man, the one that came with you, did he do that?"

Naruto rubs the back of his head. "Kind of? But he wasn't-- it was just training, you know?" He grins. "I'm tough."

"Training." She shakes her head, little metal decorations jangling in her grey hair. "What kind of training--" She looks at him and he's pretty sure that's pity. He's not sure. It's not an expression he's had much experience with.

She leaves the rest of the food with him, even though it looks like there's enough for two people, but Naruto's not complaining.

When Jiraiya pays the next morning, he avoids looking at the old woman. Naruto wonders if he tried something with one of the maids or something. He acts exactly like someone who's been told off by someone that really knows how to do it.

After they leave, Jiraiya makes him practise meditation for *days*, nothing but breathing in and out and feeling the natural flow of chakra around him.

It's boring, especially when they're still walking slowly even though his leg is perfectly fine, not even hurting a little, not enough to actually notice, not really.

Frankly, Naruto thinks that it's just an excuse. The old pervert is getting older, can't go as fast as he used to. Naruto tells him that, but the old perverts getting deaf as well and just pretends he can't hear him and walks even slower.

  
He learns how to cover his scars in Kitayama. This is -and he is often disturbed by this- not the first time he's had make-up put on him. It is extremely unfair, but the older he gets, the harder it is to say no, and while he fought as much as he could without actually hurting them the first time someone painted his face white, this time, he only yells. A lot.

But he's not stupid, and he knows that this might be useful. Genjutsu is powerful, but Konoha isn't the only village to have families with good eyes. Meiko, the woman who teaches him, has one scar that runs across the side of one cheek and a lot of freckles. She tells him how to blend colour in, how to balance out red cheeks. When they go back to the main room, Jiraiya almost doesn't recognise him. There's a split second of confusion, and then-- it's not a blank face, not a lack of emotions, but too many and too fast for Naruto to read.

"Useful," Jiraiya says. "But a bit boring. Maybe if you had a bit more colour..."

"Jiraiya-san has bold tastes," Meiko says, sitting down next to Jiraiya, pushing one of the younger girls off the bench in the process. She lowers her eyes, looking almost demure as she pours Jiraiya's drink, artfully poised, and Naruto decides to call her "neechan", even if technically, she's too old. She's earned it, he thinks.

Naruto honestly can't understand the point of gambling. You win or you lose and it just doesn't matter, because if you bet one coin of a hundred, it's still the same. No more skill playing with matchsticks than playing with money.

What he does like, however, is watching Jiraiya's face get redder and redder as Naruto wins. He learns about dice games -odds and evens- and he learns about black jack, about the different kinds of poker, because the kind Iruka taught him is *nothing* like the way these people play it.

It's especially fun beating Jiraiya at poker because the old lech keeps telling him how much he sucks, how he can't bluff to save his life, "And what kind of ninja can't even bluff?" and Naruto still beats him.

Jiraiya grumbles and mutters and Naruto grins and most of the time doesn't even bother using the different dealing techniques Iruka showed him, how to cut the cards just so, how to keep the ace in your hand or up your sleeve.

In a gambling den in Sumiyoshi, Naruto learns that you can spend all night gambling, but it's a good idea to leave quickly in the morning.

On a clear, blue day in the Nishidorimachi, a market town which is, six days a week, smaller than its name, it starts to rain. It catches the sunlight as it comes down and Naruto holds his hands, palms up, and opens his mouth to catch it on his tongue.

"Fox's wedding," says a man selling wheat and apples. "It's lucky. Means a good harvest."

"It means you should buy a good raincoat," says the woman on the stall next to him. "Feel this jumper? That's made with fisherman's wool, not been stripped clean of all the grease, keeps it nice and waterproof, keeps you warm and dry. You want one, I can sell it to you for a good price, or trade." She leans over.

In Nishidorimachi, Naruto learns that not everything from a fox is bad, that fisherman's jumpers are itchy, but it's a fair trade off for being warm and (mostly) dry.

It surprises Jiraiya, until he stops to think about it, but Naruto doesn't spend money if he can help it. He's not cheap -doesn't haggle that much- but he doesn't go out looking for things to spend his money on either.

He's never had much in the way of spending money, Jiraiya guesses. konoha would have given him money for food, rent and clothes -enough, but not much more than that. He spends money like someone that knows winter will be cold and tomorrow, he'll be hungry and you need to make sure you have enough to take care of it all.

It's there in the way he obviously feels safer when his frog-purse is smiling. Not just happier, but comforted. The opposite of anxious.

Jiraiya experiments with this in Shigawa, Matsuyama and Shitoriyama, lightening Naruto's purse, watching him when it gets filled up again. He stops when Naruto starts complaining about how broke Jiraiya is, how he has no money and always takes Naruto's, outside of every gambling den, bar and -even worse!- brothel they pass.

Jiraiya doesn't need that kind of reputation.

  
Sometimes, Naruto has a red dreams. That's what he calls them, the ones with fire and rage and vengeance drawn from pain, and he's had them all his life. They're so normal, he ignores them when he wakes up. He rarely bothers to connect them to the kyuubi, rarely even thinks about them. Fire and destruction and such joy in it, in seeing the red sky and red blood and the look on their faces when they see him, his power, his freedom. Konoha is ashes, and he cries out to the sky in joy.

Everyone has bad dreams, even he knows that, and they're not really any different from the bad dreams where he's walking through the corridors of the ninja academy and no-one's there, and he can hear people talking, but whenever he turns down a corridor or goes into a room, it's empty, and he keeps looking and there's no-one-

Or the dreams where he's walking in the village and he can see people, but they can't see him, can't hear him, no matter how much he screams.

Or the ones where Sasuke's there, except it's not him, or maybe it is and Naruto doesn't know which is worse, because he's doing things, and Sasuke wouldn't, couldn't do things like that, so it can't be him.

The red dreams aren't anything special and Naruto doesn't bother thinking about them, let alone talking about them, when he wakes up.

In Hakawa, Jiraiya watches Naruto sleep, feels the way the chakra flares behind the seal and waits for Naruto to wake. He hides his surprise when Naruto asks what they're having for breakfast, complains about Jiraiya's laziness and acts absolutely normal.

He wonders if the Fourth knew the sort of person this child would become, if he'd counted on that, or if it was just fool's luck.

Morida is decorated for the festival. It's a fertility festival, celebrating the harvest, and the houses are decorates in greenery. Statues of gods of harvest are brought out and inari is on prominent display. Jiraiya is taken off by a group of matrons and young mothers, saying how lucky it is to have strangers on a day like this, and Naruto is grabbed by people his own age.

Most of them wear brightly coloured yukata, often with the top pulled off and left hanging over the belt. Two brothers show him how to dance in circles and they all go out to the fields where fires have been lit. People jump over them, alone or in pairs. At one edge, people clap and sing in a circle, calling out while two people dance like a challenge.

He takes off his top and joins in, enthusiastic enough to make up for a lack of actual skill, feeling the grass under his feet, the warmth from the fires and from the people, orange and green and red, colourful enough to make even him blink, skin.

Someone grabs his hand he's pulled, tugged up and over and through one of the fires. It's fast enough that he doesn't feel the heat until they're through and he can smell wood-smoke.

He is kissed with the fire at his back, hearing the high-pitched spontaneous cries from the audience and someone singing in the background.


End file.
